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BitTorrent To RIAA: You're 'Barking Up the Wrong Tree'

Posted by Soulskill on from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sent a letter to BitTorrent last week asking the company to help stop copyright infringement of its members' content. Brad Buckles, RIAA's executive vice president of anti-piracy, asked BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker to "live up to" comments made by former chief content officer Matt Mason. Two quotes by Mason stand out in particular: "We don't endorse piracy," and "If you're using BitTorrent for piracy, then you're doing it wrong." Both of these remain accurate, but the RIAA wants to see BitTorrent do more. VentureBeat contacted BitTorrent to get their stance on the letter, and the company said, "Our position is that they are barking up the wrong tree, as it seems they were with their approach to CBS last week. ... We do not host, promote, or facilitate copyright infringing content and the protocol, which is in the public domain, is a legal technology.".

3 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ha hA! by ganjadude · · Score: 4, Informative

    blizzard uses it to push out patches and game downloads. so can steam if i remember correctly

    there are a number of legit uses for it that get used all the time. I believe microsoft is even using it for win 10 updates (opt in)

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  2. Re:Okay... by wirefarm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't torrent over Tor

    Torrent file-sharing applications have been observed to ignore proxy settings and make direct connections even when they are told to use Tor. Even if your torrent application connects only through Tor, you will often send out your real IP address in the tracker GET request, because that's how torrents work. Not only do you deanonymize your torrent traffic and your other simultaneous Tor web traffic this way, you also slow down the entire Tor network for everyone else.

    https://www.torproject.org/dow...

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    -- My Weblog.
  3. Actually, RIAA isn't far off base by Dynedain · · Score: 3, Informative

    For once the RIAA actually gets it. They aren't claiming that BitTorrent (the protocol) is illegal or that it doesn't have legitimate uses.

    Instead, they very specifically said that of the illegal file sharing happening over BItTorrent, the majority of it is coming from uTorrent, the client published by BItTorrent (the company).

    They're clearly looking hoping the company will implement filtering to combat piracy (likely knowing full well that they'll kill the company in the process). This tactic has worked against other companies in the past who published software that was used more for piracy than legitimate uses (MetaMachine and eDonkey anyone?). Don't go after the technology - go after the company supporting the technology.

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